“We are in a strange place. I mean, it’s almost, it’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it? And it’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of — purportedly, of the same party.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by The Hill.
“A senior advisor to the State Department appointed just two months ago has been quietly vetting career diplomats and American employees of international institutions to determine whether they are loyal to President Trump and his political agenda,” Foreign Policy reports.
“Mari Stull, a former food and beverage lobbyist-turned-wine blogger under the name ‘Vino Vixen,’ has reviewed the social media pages of State Department staffers for signs of ideological deviation. She has researched the names of government officials to determine whether they signed off on Obama-era policies — though signing off does not mean officials personally endorsed them but merely cleared them through the bureaucratic chain. And she has inquired about Americans employed by international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations, asking their colleagues when they were hired and by whom.”
A new George Washington University Politics Poll finds Americans are overwhelmingly engaged in the upcoming 2018 congressional elections with 78% of registered voters saying they definitely will vote in the November general elections and another 15% said they probably will. Only 2% said they would definitely not vote
On a generic ballot for U.S. House, voters chose Democrats over Republicans, 45% to 38%.
Said pollster John Sides: “In two respects, the poll suggests some Democratic advantages that are less visible on the surface. Democratic voters remain more politically engaged than Republican voters on several dimensions—including their willingness to do the spadework of an election campaign. And Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House are perceived more positively than Republican incumbents. Whether that will add up to a veritable ‘wave’ remains to be seen.”
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“As attorneys for Michael Cohen rush to meet Judge Kimba Wood’s Friday deadline to complete a privilege review of over 3.7 million documents seized in the April 9 raids of Cohen’s New York properties and law office, a source representing this matter has disclosed to ABC News that the law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward.”
“Cohen, now with no legal representation, is likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York, sources said. This development, which is believed to be imminent, will likely hit the White House, family members, staffers and counsels hard.”
Meanwhile, Cohen is telling friends that he expects to be arrested soon, CNBC reports.
Several months ago, President Trump “ordered the promotion of Rudy Giuliani’s son. But instead of getting promoted, he has lost his West Wing pass,” Axios reports.
“We’re told that chief of staff John Kelly did not follow through on the order, and Andrew has not been promoted. Kelly and others, including Office of Public Liaison director Justin Clark, won’t promote Andrew because they think he ‘subverts the chain of command’ and claim he had other issues in the workplace that they weren’t happy about.”
From the Wall Street Journal in January:
Around the same time, Mr. Trump had an idea about how to counter the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, which he got after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin: If the U.S. stopped joint military exercises with the South Koreans, it could help moderate Kim Jong Un’s behavior.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis used an approach that aides say can work: “He says, ‘Your instincts are absolutely correct,’ and then gets him [the president] to do the exact opposite of what his instincts say,” said one person close to the White House. Mr. Trump dropped the idea, although he has ordered aides to give the exercises a low profile, eliminating press releases and briefings about them.
According to reports, the Pentagon did not know Trump would promise to stop the military exercises with South Korea at his summit with Kim this week.
This piece is only available to Political Wire members.
In primary elections last night, Democratic voters once again embraced the candidates favored by party leaders — and in many cases even handpicked by them — spurning insurgents who sought to align themselves with disrupters on the left, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
It wasn’t an aberration either. Very few liberal insurgents have won primary elections this year. Predictions that Democrats might face their own version of a Tea Party rebellion that upended the GOP in 2010 have not materialized. Democratic primary voters don’t seem to have major problems their party’s leadership in Washington, D.C.
If there’s any insurgency in the Democratic party, it’s been from female candidates. Women are winning primaries at an unprecedented rate. According to the Cook Political Report, Democrats have nominated women in just under half of their open House primaries, 73 out of 150 races.
It’s smart politics. As David Wasserman wrote last month:
In 2000, Gallup found that 70 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans agreed that “the country would be governed better if there were more women in political office.” In December 2017, a CNN/SSRS pollasked voters, “Do you think this country would be governed better or worse if more women were in political office?” The gap had doubled: 83 percent of Democrats said “better,” but just 36 percent of Republicans did so.
Interestingly, Independent respondents to the CNN/SSRS poll were much closer to Democrats’ view: 63 percent of them said “better,” as did 68 percent of self-identified moderates. This suggests Democrats’ primary embrace of women could pay November dividends.
The irony is that in a year of great victories for Democratic women, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is considered a serious liability for many Democratic candidates. She may not even have the votes to become Speaker again if Democrats win back control of the House.
But that’s a problem that even Pelosi would be happy to deal with later if Democrats can prevail.
A new SEIU/Strategies 360 poll finds that Jared Polis (D) holds a lead over Cary Kennedy (D) atop the four-way Democratic primary to be Colorado’s next governor, 34% to 23%, but both would defeat Republican frontrunner Walker Stapleton (D) by the same margin in a general election.
“The Trump administration is urging a federal court in Texas to declare DACA illegal, setting up a potential conflict that could allow the government to shut the program down within a matter of weeks,” NBC News reports.
“While this latest development has received little attention, it could suspend or stop a federal initiative that has allowed 700,000 young people, known as Dreamers, to avoid deportation.”
EPA chief Scott Pruitt “last year had a top aide help contact Republican donors who might offer his wife a job, eventually securing her a position at a conservative political group that has backed him for years,” the Washington Post reports.
“The job hunt included Pruitt’s approaching wealthy party supporters and conservative figures with ties to the Trump administration. The individuals said he enlisted Samantha Dravis, then serving as associate administrator for the EPA’s Office of Policy, to line up work for his wife.”
This piece is only available to Political Wire members.
President Trump arrives home from the G7 meetings and his summit with Kim Jong Un with an even tighter grip on the Republican party. Trumpism is flourishing inside his party and the forces he exploited to take control nearly two years ago are stronger than ever.
Last night’s night’s primary results prove there’s little room for disagreement between GOP candidates and the president.
In Virginia, the race for the GOP Senate nomination was another yet rush by candidates to embrace Trump and the winner, Corey Stewart (R), is a hard-right politician who has defended white supremacists with as much vigor as much as he has embraced Trump.
In South Carolina, Trump attacked Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) with a tweet from Air Force One for not being loyal and the longtime conservative politician lost his first race ever.
Even back on Capitol Hill, GOP lawmakers refused to rein in Trump’s plans for slapping tariffs on U.S. allies and mostly praised his meeting with North Korea’s leader. A party that once stood for free trade and rejected negotiations with rogue states is now basically letting Trump do what he wants. The only lawmakers who criticize him are those that are retiring.
It’s far from clear that Trump’s remaking of the Republican party is a positive for future electoral dominance. According to polls, most of Trump’s policy positions are favored by just a minority of voters and his approval rating is still at historic lows.
But ideology is no longer the motivating force for Republican voters. It’s all about loyalty to the president.
A new Siena poll in New York finds that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) leads primary challenger Cynthia Nixon (D) by a wide margin, 61% to 26%.
In a general election match up, Cuomo crushes Marc Molinaro (R), 56% to 37%.
Politico: “A growing number of Republicans in senior leadership positions, who all profess that Mueller should have no artificial deadline for his Russia influence probe, have also begun to sprinkle in another suggestion: It’s time to wrap it up.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that “months of sustained conservative attacks led by President Trump and his allies has harmed Mueller most among Republicans, with a record 53% now saying they view the lead Russia investigator in an unfavorable light. That’s a 26-point spike since July, when the poll first started asking voters whether they viewed Mueller favorably or unfavorably.”
“Mueller’s unfavorable numbers have hit highs among both Democrats and independents, at 24% and 33%, respectively. Thirty-six percent of all registered voters are also seeing Mueller unfavorably, which represents the highest level since the polling first raised the topic 11 months ago. Back then, 23% of all voters said they viewed Mueller negatively.”
Politico: “In the end, it wasn’t the Appalachian Trail that brought down Mark Sanford. It was President Trump. The South Carolina congressman’s stunning defeat in Tuesday’s Republican primary effectively ended the turbulent two-decade career of a political icon who once harbored presidential aspirations.”
“His defeat is bound to raise fears among Republicans about the political perils of crossing a president who remains deeply popular with GOP voters. In recent days, Sanford himself had expressed concern that a loss in the primary would discourage what dwindling GOP dissent among against the White House remains.”
Associated Press: “Though Trump is far from the first U.S. president to work with an unsavory counterpart to achieve a strategic goal, his decision to broadcast that he tacitly accepts Kim’s history of atrocities was a sharp break from the position of presidents from both parties to set America as the exemplar shining city on a hill for other nations to emulate.”
Caleb Frostman (D) won a special election for Wisconsin state Senate, giving Democrats their 43rd state legislative pickup this cycle, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Frostman won the district 51% to 49%, a 21-point swing from 2016. He’ll be the first Democrat to hold the seat in four decades.
A new Enquirer/Suffolk University poll in Ohio – the first statewide, independent poll since the Ohio primary – showed Richard Cordray (D) leading Mike DeWine (R) in the governor’s race, 43% to 36% among likely voters.
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) leads challenger Jim Renacci (R), 53% to 37%.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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